Cointreau (White Lady)

I already hinted on orange liqueurs when introducing maraschino. And I reasoned we’d get to that soon enough. Now would be that time.

The point is that we need some kind of orange liqueur. But the world of orange liqueurs is extremely blurred. One thing is certain: the main distinction in orange liqueurs is between curaçao and triple sec.

Curaçao is of Dutch descent, with a little help from the Spanish. Originally it is made by steeping the dried peels of the Laraha fruit in spirits (although only the Senior distiller of Curaçao continues to use the limited Laraha harvest for their product). It comes in several colors: blue is (sadly) the best known variant, although there aren’t many good cocktails which are blue. Orange comes in second, and is the staple color to use. Red is also known, and even wilder colors might be found. An easy way to differentiate between curaçao and triple sec is checking whether it has a color.

Triple sec would be the colorless one. It’s the French answer to curaçao, although there’s still a debate whether Combier or Cointreau was the first triple sec. It’s also unclear what the term ‘triple sec’ means, but I’ll go along with those that assert it indicates a triple distilling process. When inferior products began to stain the reputation of triple sec, Cointreau decided to strike the term ‘triple sec’ from their bottles. Combier likes to present itself as the untarnished, original premium triple sec. All this is not without reason: there are certainly some bad triple secs on the market. So let’s stay away from those.

I won’t go into too much detail about the curaçao/triple sec confusion. That’s not the purpose of this blog and others have done more research into the subject (although still with plenty uncertainties). But if you want to get to the bottom of things, you can find more information here and here.

From a very practical viewpoint, one orange liqueur of fine quality would do to cover most cocktail recipes. So we’ll go with Cointreau. Not only because triple sec is used more often than curaçao in cocktails. But also because Cointreau is often named specifically as an ingredient, such as is the case with the legendary White Lady.

White Lady

Legendary, but relatively unknown. Harry Craddock considered it his signature cocktail. There’s some debate whether Harry McElhone (bartender, writer and eventually the owner of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris) or Harry Craddock can claim the White Lady. I’d have to side with Harry Craddock.

Sure, McElhone might have come up with the name: in 1919 he mixed a White Lady that contained crème de menthe, Cointreau and lemon juice. In his ABC of Mixing Cocktails he switches out the lemon juice for brandy. At the end of the 20s he finally conforms to the gin based variant. All in all it doesn’t strike as a thoroughly thought-out plan.

Meanwhile, in 1927, Harry Craddock buries a cocktail shaker which contains a White Lady in a wall of the American Bar at the Savoy (which hasn’t been reclaimed yet, by the way).

That’s not something one would do with just any cocktail: it means Craddock considered the White Lady something special.

It’s one of those simple recipes that are extremely logical, but somehow the White Lady didn’t survive the decades as well as the Sidecar or the Margarita. But that doesn’t have to stop us from continuing Craddock’s legacy.

4 parts gin

3 parts Cointreau

2 parts lemon juice

glass:  cocktail

Shake with ice and strain into the glass.

To be honest, the ratio is different from Craddock’s version. The Savoy calls for 2 parts gin, and 1 part each of Cointreau and lemon juice. I prefer the variant with slightly more Cointreau, but feel free to try both versions. You might even end up with your own ratio: that’s just fine. Recipes are the basis for mixing, not the final word. Tinkering with ratios and ingredients is part of the game.

As you can see, the White Lady is certainly lighter than the Aviation sans Violette. The lemon juice used here was carefully strained and extremely clear.

I prefer the White Lady without any garnish: it wouldn’t be a lady if it needed decoration to impress.